(Yicai Global) Oct. 27 -- Chinese mainland manufacturers in the world's largest market for color television chips need to upgrade their product portfolios to compete with offshore rivals such as Taiwan province-based MediaTek.

Mainland firms are gaining a foothold but Taiwan-headquartered companies dominate the global market as the gap in high-end products is still significant, Yicai Global learned from insiders.

The combined global market share of Taiwan's three major color TV semiconductor giants, including MediaTek, Novatek Microelectronics, and Realtek Semiconductor, exceeds 70 percent, according to Omdia China. The largest one is MediaTek with a market share of 58.9 percent.

Although Chinese color TV set manufacturers are actively using local chips, premium chips are still mostly those made in the island province, Cao Yi, chief executive of Hefei-based V-Silicon, told Yicai Global.

Mainland companies have a long way to go to develop high-value system-on-chips, but there are other types of color TV chips such as power chips, WiFi wireless chips, and display driver integrated circuits, said Zhang Bing, research director at Omdia. These are used for peripheral devices. Still, the share of these kinds of products delivered by China's mainland is growing rapidly, Zhang added.

China's annual smart TV market equals about 40 million units, and about half of them feature mainland-made color TV chips, Cao said. Meanwhile, mainland-based semiconductor manufacturers occupy about 15 percent of the global market share of around 230 million TV sets. The main players include Shanghai-based Amlogic and Shenzhen-based Huawei Technologies' HiSilicon, an insider said.

Amlogic’s color TV chip shipments reached 12.3 million in 2021, followed by HiSilicon, said Zhang. The two firms shipped nearly 20 million color TV chips last year, or about 9 percent of the global total. Amlogic’s 2022 interim report shows that well-known TV brands, including TCL, Skyworth, Hisense, Changhong, Maxhub, and Seewo use its SoC chip solutions.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi